Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#431

Post by zlg_codes » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:00 AM UTC

raincom wrote: post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any t…

Do you happen to know if credit unions can hide behind banking regulations? As an account holder, I also own a share in the company.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#432

Post by 77pt77 » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:02 AM UTC

Ajay-p wrote: post #59

wolverine876 wrote: post #8

You can be barred from flying (is that still true?) and now banking, without trial or evidence. It's already highly anti-democratic, but imagine what an aggressive, oppressive government will do with this power.

You can also have your money and property seized without charge or conviction by police, while sitting on the side of the road. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-gla...

> A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied. He was the only passenger singled out for a search by DEA agents – and the only black person on his portion of the train

Never answer with any info, never consent to searches.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#433

Post by zlg_codes » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:02 AM UTC

raincom wrote: post #130

creer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such thing as "an algorithm run amuck" - more like "another department run amuck". Someone programmed the thing, someone is running it deliberately.

Regulators fined Chase and other big banks for "weak controls". One way to show that these big banks have "strong controls" is to change parameters for these algorithms. Many legitimate transactions fall under structuring, layering, smurfing, laundering. After all, any goal of money laundering is to make their transactions appear "legitimate". Now almost all transactions (except for big businesses and people with few…

Wrt keeping multiple accounts, what is the benefit of that compared to the overhead of monitoring and managing them? Is it just a contingency? Banks in particular have no real reason to give you your money back or respect your privacy. Why would I put my money in an institution that I can't trust?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#434

Post by Tao3300 » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:03 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #260

phpisthebest wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just follow any Conservative, Christian, or Gun group and you will see stories of Chase closing accounts for political reasons, Chase is will known for this in many political circles

What sort of “political reasons”?

Guess I touched a nerve.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#435

Post by Accujack » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:04 AM UTC

raincom wrote: post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any t…

> If they don't like you, they can close your account by simply stating that "we have an obligation to know our customers; after careful consideration, we decided to close your account".

What's really behind the decision is simply risk avoidance. It's like "firing" bad customers. The banks consider it prudent business to kick anyone who might be a problem out the door. Avoiding one criminal causing issues is worth kicking out 20 ordinary honest customers.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#436

Post by zlg_codes » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:06 AM UTC

panarky wrote: post #265

raincom wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good that you trust Chase and other banks with the lame 'evidence' that they provide such as: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." Based on that standard template, I won't trust big banks, becaus…

None of this is about whether I trust Chase or not. It's about the big claim that Chase monitors the political activity of their customers and systematically closes the accounts of people with opinions Chase doesn't like. There's precisely zero evidence that they do this. Even if one blindly accepts your citations from "The 700 Club" and some random post from "Nitter" as authoritative, even they provide zero evidence…

So if MSM doesn't report, it doesn't exist? State the requirements of 'compelling evidence'.

You debate like that Chase email explains their reasoning.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#437

Post by zlg_codes » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:11 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #362

fencepost wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very far from dealing with 500k personal banking transactions, but my immediate thought is that if you're doing so you're probably making mistakes. If it's revenue from sale of a company or similar, move it through escrow with your attorney. If it's a legal settlement, do the same. If you don't have an attorney but are dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars, get an attorney. If it's income from trading or…

One should get an attorney if they desire legal representation, period. Otherwise it's quite perverse to be contributing to one of the main guilds facilitating this cesspool of overregulation, just in the hopes that their social status is going to make a bank think twice. And also attorneys aren't immune from this. In fact, one reason to actually get an attorney is that you want to launder some money. Also, business…

Wait hold up, lawyers can help you avoid the law as well?

I suspect the bar would not allow that.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#438

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:12 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #414

WalterBright wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think most of those things you just told us actually happened Believe whatever you need to. But consider this: People are fundamentally selfish. Building a system that assumes general altruistic behavior is not going to work very well. Assuming people will not take advantage of rules for their personal benefit is naive. Consider politicians. Have you ever noticed that people tend to go into Congress as midd…

Just some thoughts from a fellow graybeard (if I had a beard). Take em or leave em: Bitterness about somebody else who's worse off than you getting things you don't think they deserve, doesn't add to one's own happiness or wellbeing. Don't let those example people live rent-free in your head. They're barely eeking out an existence on some US State's laughable safety net. I seem to remember you're likely a computer pr…

I'm just saying that when you incentivize people to do X, be aware that X is what you're going to get, every time.

I remember when the unit at the company I worked for decided to put a big graph of the bug count on the wall, and announced incentives for retiring bug reports. Within a week, the entire unit had devolved into knock-down drag out fights over who had solved a bug, if a bug was really a bug, if a bug was actually 3 bugs and the person should get 3 credits for solving it, people filing fake bug reports and then "fixing" them, etc. A couple more weeks of that and the graph was taken down and the incentive program terminated. These were intelligent, well-educated people, going berserk.

There was another case where the company got a big contract from IBM, and hired some mercenary contractors to fulfill it. Part of the deal was each mercenary got a $10,000 bonus (worth about $30,000 today) for getting it done on time. I'm sure you know what happened. It shipped the day before the deadline.

I asked one of them, "did the bonus get you to finish on time?" The response, "absolutely not, it had nothing to do with it. We're professionals!"

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#439

Post by landemva » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:13 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #306

landemva wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't throw up our hands and give up the idea of border control. We must reside in different countries. Being in USA, I observe we did drop enforcement on the southern border. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/23/kama... "... administration has ended the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocol, a policy that forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as they await their court hearings, and has ha…

The Biden administration has decided to build the wall, as of fall 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/border-wall-biden.html

This is confusing. According to that article twenty miles will be built because present administration is unable to stop it.

  "... building up to 20 miles of border wall because he has to. The administration said that it was bound to build this section of new wall because Congress already appropriated the funding to do so in 2019. It had been unsuccessful in convincing Congress to rescind the funding, Mr. Mayorkas said."

Seems other parts will not be built, and materials were sold off already.

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-border-wall-material-auct...

It's like USA personality changes every few months, and there are unlimited funds for these games.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#440

Post by robocat » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 5:14 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #343

robocat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the moment. New Zealand doesn't have cheques any more. Banks here totally phased them out a couple of years back. The USA will also make checks obsolete over time. Plus cash is disliked at many retailers and cash is not acceptable at some locations (e.g. my skifield only accepts cards - I was told it is because the nearest small-town bank won't accept cash deposits from the skifield). I suspect our government wil…

I wouldn’t necessarily expect us to follow New Zealand’s example. We’ve accumulated a lot of methods for exchanging money without really discarding any in particular. New Zealand is a small country way out in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean 2.5K miles (or over 4K kilometers) away from its nearest neighbor and with a population smaller than NYC. The United States is 50 stubborn ass States plus the Fed’s occupati…

> with a population smaller than NYC

Australia has a population bigger than NYC and "Australia is set to be a cheque-less society by the end of the decade, if the federal government has its way."

Zealand has a population and land area similar to Oregon. Might as well say NZ has a much bigger population than Wyoming - NYC is irrelevant.

Cheques have slowly disappeared because of economic reasons: the transaction costs/risks involved, and because electronic transfers have benefits. The economic forces are likely similar in the states. I believe the change has little to do with the NZ government nor the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.